An evening with the scientist

Last night I was out in the West End, not at some glitzy show but at an event with the former chair of the IPCC. (That's the international panel of climate scientists. The bods who did all the number crunching that's enabled us to clearly say "Climate Change is happening!") The chap's name is Sir John Houghton, and he delivered a very concise presentation to a mostly Christian audience. He had a few graphs, but his best was saved for some scary dead-pan predictions of the consequences of inaction. He didn't beat around the bush, this is some serious stuff. One of his points was the recent unprecedented European heatwave in 2003 where upwards of 20,000 people died prematurely as a result of the 40C+ temperatures. Being something I experienced and remember, it was alarming to have this highlighted. My memories of that hot summer center on being able to swim in normally ice-cold lakes and rivers of Cumbria. I wasn't thinking of people dying of heat exhaustion. It was also not more than a year and a half later, in January 2005, that we had the extreme flooding in the centre of Carlisle. Something, seen firsthand, I would definately class as an extreme weather event. I remember quite vividly the destruction, the cleanup and the effect it had on many of my friends, some of whom were out of their homes for almost a year. On that occasion some 3000 people were forced out of their houses and flats. These memories struck a real cord with what the stats Sir John was quoting. He gave figures in the tens of millions for people being forced to move due to sea level rise and extreme weather events. The presentation was followed by questions to a panel which included two other Climate Change specialists. One was "what career should I do if your passionate about Climate Change". All I could think was "not event management". Despite the scary predictions it was an insightful event. My evening came to the end with a Scandinavian chap bending my ear on a research project, measuring rates of collapse in some part of the Greenland icecap. A little random to say the least. I am convinced that he only came to me because I was wearing a suit. Note to self - don't wear a suit to Climate Change events.